Mass Effect 2

[nCogNeato]

Limited Edition Armor

With this and the Dragon Age armor, I'm excited to start the game as a BAMF*.



*The term "BAMF" is not a reference to Nightcrawler.   Sorry, xnightcrawlerxx.   

[nCogNeato]

Tricia Helfer & Martin talk about their voice roels

How funny (and awesome) is the facial accuracy of Yvonne Strahovski / Miranda Lawson.  It's almost creepy.

[xnightcrawlerxx]

*The term "BAMF" is not a reference to Nightcrawler.   Sorry, xnightcrawlerxx.   

i guess i wont sue you for copyright infringement......this time

[xnightcrawlerxx]

After Mass Effect 2 lead gameplay designer Christina Norman walked us through the Engineer class and it's sanguinary droid last week, we were wondering how BioWare could possibly appeal to our inner tactician any more. It appears that the developer sought to do just that with this week's introduction to the Sentinel.

Skilled in both biotic skills (thats space magic, folks) and tech abilities, Norman says the Sentinel is "the only class that can blast through any enemy's defenses ... with or without your squad backing you up." With only a handful of weeks left before the game's January 26 release date, it won't be long before we get to find out exactly how adept the Sentinel is for ourselves.

[nCogNeato]

... biotic skills (thats space magic, folks)

That made me laugh.   

When playing through the first game, I wondered if BioWare / EA had to pay some type of licensing or royalty fee to George Lucas to avoid "The Force" lawsuits.

[Failed]

They never really make a massive deal of it though in the game, not like Star Wars where nothing will work without Space Magic.

[KoreRupt]

... biotic skills (thats space magic, folks)

That made me laugh.   

When playing through the first game, I wondered if BioWare / EA had to pay some type of licensing or royalty fee to George Lucas to avoid "The Force" lawsuits.

They probably didnt due to the fact that Bioware is on really good terms with Lucas Arts, due to making KoToR and producing the new MMO Star Wars: Old Republic   Cant wait for it

Cant wait for ME2 either.. I waited years for ME1.. and when it arrived i was blown away by its sheer depth of world/universe lore and how detailed backgrounds were etc.. so im sure ME2 will surpass the original (hopefully in length) in everyway

[nCogNeato]

... biotic skills (thats space magic, folks)

That made me laugh.   

When playing through the first game, I wondered if BioWare / EA had to pay some type of licensing or royalty fee to George Lucas to avoid "The Force" lawsuits.

They probably didnt due to the fact that Bioware is on really good terms with Lucas Arts, due to making KoToR and producing the new MMO Star Wars: Old Republic

Maybe that was part of the deal.

LucasArts:  We'll let the "biotic" thing slide, but you have make Old Republic f***ing legendary!
BioWare:  Yes, master.

[Failed]

Do you think Lucas dresses up as the Emperor when Bioware call round for tea and to ask about using Space Magic?

[xnightcrawlerxx]

joystiq has some spoilers up.......i didnt post them for obvious reasons

[GamerMan316]

BioWare: We haven't peaked on 360
'There's a lot more power we can get out of the 360,' says Mass Effect producer

BioWare reckons there's still "a lot more power" its future releases can get out of the Xbox 360 hardware.

Speaking in our just-published Mass Effect 2 interview, producer Adrien Cho said the developer hasn't yet "peaked" on Microsoft's console.

"For this game, we've squeezed even more out of the Xbox 360," he said. "Mass Effect 1 when it came out I think represented this watershed moment; it was a benchmark, it was really innovative in many ways. But we knew at that time there were many ways in which we could improve, it's just time limitations. So given two more years of development our artists, engineers and programmers have learnt how to extract more out of the engine.

"Have we actually peaked? No. I was the technical artist on the first game and what we do is build things a lot smarter to avoid some of those issues like texture pop-in in the sequel," he added. "But I don't think we've reached that ceiling yet; there's actually a lot more power that we can get out of the 360."

Cho said that he believes Mass Effect 2 will represent "one of the first games of the second generation," and that the lifespan of the Xbox 360 is "at least a few more years".

[DFUSIONITE]

god i need this game so bad!

[GamerMan316]

Still not played the first game yet, it's been sat underneath Test Drive Unlimited for quite some time now, not played that in ages either 

[nCogNeato]

Aside from the infamous 'elevator' scenes, my only real complaint with the original Mass Effect was the texture popping.  The details and scope of the game were so much more than I had seen before that point, but the texture popping was out of control at times.

I really liked the 'focus' feature in Borderlands that allowed slow-loading details to load into focus, rather than "pop".  Much easier on the eyes, and made the overall game just feel more organic.  Hopefully Mass Effect 2 uses a similar feature, if they haven't entiredly ride the game of slow texture loading altogether.

[xnightcrawlerxx]

In a recent interview with CVG, BioWare producer Adrien Cho assured that the plan isn't to jettison Mass Effect 2 into the deep, dark retail space without some form of continued support. According to Cho, some of the core development team has already moved on to creating DLC for the game, which could range from new items, including weapons and armor, to side quests that might even build "up to full expansion packs." Cho added that the team has more flexibility to create DLC for the sequel than it did for the first game, explaining that add-on content "was always on our radar from day one."

It sounds like BioWare has big plans for Mass Effect 2 DLC. That is, it sounds like the plans are a bit more sophisticated than the original Mass Effect's DLC strategy: "release completely broken, partially inaccessible DLC without telling anybody about its existence."